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Stigma
'' |image= |series= |production=40358-040/214 |producer(s)= |story= |script=Rick Berman and Brannon Braga |director=David Livingston |imdbref=tt0572239 |guests=Melinda Page Hamilton as Feezal, Michael Ensign as Doctor Oratt, Bob Morrisey as Doctor Strom, Jeffrey Hayenga as Doctor Yuris and Lee Spencer as Vulcan Doctor |previous_production=Dawn |next_production=Cease Fire |episode=ENT S02E14 |airdate=5 February 2003 |previous_release=Dawn |next_release=Cease Fire |story_date(s)=Unknown (2152) |previous_story=Dawn |next_story=Cease Fire }} =Summary= Doctor Phlox tells Sub−Commander T'Pol that his treatment of her potentially fatal disease, Pa'nar Syndrome, is losing effectiveness, so he would like to make confidential inquiries with Vulcan doctors attending an interspecies medical exchange on the planet Enterprise is now orbiting. T'Pol resists, but Phlox chooses to go anyway. Before he does, his second wife, Feezal, arrives to help install a new microscope, and she soon begins making amorous advances on Commander Tucker. Unfortunately, a confused Tucker cannot quite wrap his mind around polygamy, which, in Denobulan culture, is quite a normal practice. On the planet, Phlox's inquiries with the Vulcans yields little information. When the Vulcans request to visit and interview Phlox and T'Pol, it is clear that the subterfuge had failed, since the Vulcans trick T'Pol into providing a medical sample, which confirms their suspicions. Pa'nar Syndrome is only transmitted via mind-meld, a practice which is considered taboo on the Vulcan homeworld. Captain Archer is upset to learn about T'Pol's condition from the Vulcans. Archer then pays his own visit to the Vulcans - a visit which is no more fruitful than Phlox's first. One of the doctors, Yuris, sets up a secret meeting with T'Pol to give her the information she seeks. He reveals a closely guarded secret: he himself is a mind–melder. T'Pol tells Yuris that the meld which gave her the disease was forced on her. Yuris begs her to tell the others before the Vulcan High Command is informed of her condition, but she declines. It then comes out that T'Pol could lose her commission since Pa'nar is a stigmatized disease. Archer uses a loophole in Vulcan protocol to force a hearing. T'Pol remains silent, but Archer stands by his science officer, all the while resisting the Vulcan doctors. Yuris then reveals his status as a melder, and exposes T'Pol's secret. As a result, he is suspended, but T'Pol is allowed to remain on Enterprise. She continues to stand her ground and states her intent to inform the High Command of recent events, hoping to encourage others to challenge prejudice. Nit Central # Zul on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:47 pm: My question that I didn't really understand is that obviously they find a cure for the Pe'Nar syndrome in the latter centuries as we see mind melds performed frequently. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: But only a small percentage of Melders come down with this disease, as Yuris tells T’Pol in the opening scene of Act 3. (Just as not all gay people have AIDS. It’s like saying that there must be a cure for AIDS in the future if we see gay people who practice sodomy frequently, when in fact, sodomy in and of itself doesn’t cause AIDS.) It’s possible that more is learned about mindmelds that allows Vulcans to perfect their use without the dangers seen here. I think that there’s a lot about mind melds (and perhaps Vulcan neurology in general) that they learn in the intervening century that they don’t know of here. For example, it is stated in this episode that only a small percentage of Vulcans are born with the ability to perform mindmelds, but by the TOS/TNG era, it seems most Vulcans have telepathic abilities, and that it’s an integral part of the culture. (Picard summed up Spock’s poor relationship with Sarek to Riker in Unification partI (TNG) by simply saying, "They never melded," which may suggest that mindmelding between parent and child is an important activity among Vulcans.) Perhaps the Vulcans at this point only think that a small segment of the population is born with the ability, but later discover otherwise (although it’s interesting that Archer points out to Dr. Strom in Act 2 that they should she doesn’t have mindmelding ability because they have her genetic profile). Perhaps this revolutionizes Vulcan society, and for all we know, maybe this is why Vulcans of later centuries seem to uphold the edict against emotions far more successfully than the Vulcans of the 2150’s because the mindmeld helps them to do so. Sparrow47 on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:43 pm: My idea was that the "abberation" being spoken of isn't an abberation at all, but an evolutionary breakthrough ala Transfigurations which would make it inevitable that it would filter into the rest of the Vulcan populace. This might also explain why Romulans can't do mind-melds (although we've never heard that they can't, but there seems to have been plenty of opportunity for them to do so).LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 11:05 pm: Well, in addition to Sela’s telepathic lieutenant in the non-canon Peter David novel Imzadi II, the Reman Viceroy in ST Nemesis had telepathic abilities, and that appeared to be a mindmeld that he performed with Shinzon. Seniram 14:50, October 26, 2018 (UTC) I can see the logic in Sparrow47’s evolutionary breakthrough suggestion but - SPOILER ALERT! - Vulcan society’s outright hostility regarding mind melds, which is clearly shown here, could be due to the fact that, as seen in the Season 4 Surak arc, the head of the Vulcan government during these events is actually an agent of the Romulan Star Empire! ' # ''SMT on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 7:26 pm: During the Interspecies Medical Exchange conference, we hear a PA announcement about an event being rescheduled for 1400 hours. First, why is the voice in English, when humans are presumably a tiny minority at the conference if they're present at all? ''LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm:'' Perhaps we only hear it in English, but it’s transmitted with the u.t. for all to understand it in their own language.' # Second, why in hours, for the same reason? '''That could be a standard term for divisions in a day.' # While setting up the neutron microscope, Feezal instructs Trip to "insert the thick end" of an instrument into a port. It looked like that instrument was equally thick at both ends. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: Yeah, and after he inserts it, she even tells him, "You can pull it out now." :) #If this disease affects the structure of the brain, how can its presence be determined by a scan of DNA collected from a fingertip? That is DNA we see on the screen. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: The disease also affects the endocrine system and the immune system, as T’Pol states to Dr. Oratt near the end of Act 1. # First we are told the meld occurred nearly a year ago. A bit later, we're told it was over a year ago. Yes, I suppose the anniversary instant could have fallen between these two statements, but is it really likely? LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 11:05 pm: I know Archer was the one who said "over" a year ago in the beginning of the hearing in Act 4, but who said "nearly"? Do you remember which scene it was, SMT? Fusion took place around November 16, 2151, because T’Pol told Tolaris at the end of Act 1 of that episode that she’d spent seven months on the Enterprise. The last ep before this one with a date was Catwalk, which was September 18, 2152, which Archer gave in the opening shot of the teaser. Dawn had no date (I think), nor this one, but episodes are generally thought to span or take place two weeks apart to make 26 episodes (or 26 hours of the season) come out to about an Earth year. If we were to assume this the case with the this episode, then this episode takes place just under a year after Fusion. If it takes place two months or more after Catwalk, it would be more than a year. In any case, it’s possible that Archer or the other person (T’Pol?) simply mispoke. :) # The plot of this story hinges on the fact that the meld that infected T'Pol was forced upon her, not voluntary. Trouble is, we saw Fusion. We saw that it did indeed start out as consensual, only later becoming forced. Not to be a logic-chopper (logic is for Vulcans, right?), but T'Pol is either lying, or conveniently redefining consent to fit her situation, or the writers are ignoring the facts of an earlier episode to make a point. And do they ever make a point, over and over and over, and at the expense of much more than continuity with Fusion. Mind melding is now a minority trait among Vulcans? Mind melding is socially disgraceful, rather than extremely private but otherwise accepted? (Or not so private. Remember the brief meld T'Pau initiated with Spock, in front of outworlders, in Amok Time?) SPOILER ALERT! She may have chosen to do this in front of outworlders, namely Kirk and McCoy, due to the debt modern Vulcan owed to Archer, due to him recovering the true teachings of Surak, while carrying the latter’s Katra. # Sparrow47 on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 7:35 pm: Once again we're treated to the recurring "the High Command tries to get T'Pol off the ship" theme. What, exactly did she do to the High Command to get them so pissed off? inblackestnight on Friday, September 21, 2007 - 9:22 am: For starters, she assisted in revealing that spy station at the monestary on P'Jem(?), and did what she could to prevent the High Command from covering it up. # So... this Pa'nar syndrome... there's only one way in which it can be contracted. And T'Pol knows what that one way is. Furthermore, she knows about the "minority" in Vulcan culture that can mind-meld. So... all the way back in Fusion, not only did none of this come up, but T'Pol acted like she didn't know what mind-melds were. Hmmmmmmm… LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: Well, she disapproved of the expression of emotions, but it’s possible that she simply wasn’t well versed in some of the details of the Melder culture, and therefore didn’t know that mindmelds were cause for persecution. # LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 8:50 pm: I liked it from right from Act 1! The allegory was very well done, I liked the continuity that was made with Fusion, and I liked how the Vulcans became suspicious, interrogated T’Pol and used the PADD to get a DNA sample from her. I had an idea why T’Pol would refuse to explain that what happened in Fusion was against her will, and I was glad I was right. The fact that there is an Enterprise-era stigma against mind melds, which we know to be an integral part of Vulcan society by the TOS/TNG eras, is VERY interesting! One thing though: I think it would’ve been better if Yuris only revealed that he was a Melder in Act 4 not only to Oratt, but to us as well. If he explained his helping T’Pol in Act 2 as mere sympathy, but didn’t reveal that he was a Melder himself until Act 4, it would’ve been more powerful. Sparrow47 on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 8:57 pm:''Darn! I had the same thought right before I checked the board! I was thinking that it would've been interesting if T'Pol's clandestine meeting had been with a "shadowy figure," so to speak. Then when Yuris has his outburst, it would all fall into place, so to speak.''LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: Yeah, THAT would’ve been cool too! # Just as ship’s medical officers in Trek have long exhibited expertise in fields far removed from general medical practice, so too have engineers been often seen working on things that are far removed from normal ship’s functions. For exmple, if Feezal is on the Enterprise, why does Trip have to be involved at all with installing the neutron microscope? Are chief engineers on submarines, for example, qualified to install CAT scanners or MRI machines in hospitals? inblackestnight on Friday, September 21, 2007 - 9:22 am: You make a good point, one that I recently made on another board, but setting up one of those machines simply requires the ability to follow instructions, which every engineer should be able to do. # Up until now, I got the impression that Denobulans had only one name. In Dear Doctor, Phlox addressed Dr. Lucas as such, but signed his letter "Phlox" at the end of that episode, and Cutler, with whom Phlox becames close during the first season, addressed him as "Phlox" in both Dear Doctor and later in Two Days and Two Nights. But in Act 3 of this episode, when Feezal joins Hoshi and Trip in the Mess Hall, she introduces herself to Hoshi as "Feezal Phlox." Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 4:38 am: The name Feezal Phlox makes even less sense when one considers that she has more than one husband. Seniram 14:50, October 26, 2018 (UTC) I have two theories for Feezal using the name Phlox, in lieu of a family name. Either it’s a Denobulan marriage custom, whereby each member of the marriage group can adopt, as part of their own name, the name of the participant they regard as their primary spouse, or she chose to use it when introducing herself, in order to emphasise her connection to Phlox, as a way to conform to social norms used by the mainly human crew of Enterprise. # More, geography challenges. T'Pol says her meeting with Yuris is set for "the northern part of the city." What city? The city where the conference is? Okay, what's that city called? LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:17 pm: If the city’s name was already referenced off-camera as the city where the Conference is being held, then I could understand if it’s referred to generically. When people where I live say that they’re going into "the city," everyone knows they mean New York. # Also lost in the mix here is the apparent belief the Vulcans have that non-Vulcans can't receive mind-melds. Just like time travel is impossible… They just don’t like admitting when they’re wrong! # stardust on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 10:37 pm: Okay, here's something else. Trip says that he couldn't figure out the instructions for putting the microscope together because they were in Denobulan. Denobulan? Why were the instructions sent in Denobulan? Alternatively, why couldn't he get a translation? Given that Denobulans and humans seem to be well-accquainted, this doesn't make sense. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 - 11:05 pm: What makes even less sense is that Feezal is showing Trip how to install and use the microscope instead of Phlox. Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 7:24 am: I didn't have any problem with that point. For all we know, she wasn't going to be brought aboard until Phlox said she was his wife, at which point Archer said, "Well, why don't you bring her aboard?" Or something like that. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 8:34 am: I’m not sure I follow. How does that pertain to her showing Trip how to install and use the microscope instead of Phlox? # Trike on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 12:11 am: Did T'Pol look sickly? It seemed to me that she did in most scenes. I don't think she was supposed to; maybe it's just that her makeup was different. This could be due to the mental strain of the investigation. # It would have smoothed out the story if there had been a name for the minority. LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 8:34 am: They were referred to as "Melders," albeit not often. The phrase "the minority" was used more often, for some reason. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 4:38 am: Sooooo, telepathy is a small genetic minority in Vulcan society, the practice of which is seen as unnatural? What about that telepathic weapon that the Vulcans used thousands of years ago as we learned in Gambit (NextGen), what about the apparently ancient Vulcan ceremonies that use telepathy? Bonding with a future mate (Amok Time); the purging of emotions (Star Trek: The Motion Picture); passing on the Katra & restoring the Katra (Star Trek III: The Search For Spock). LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 8:34 am: Good point about the Stone of Gol, but I’m not so sure about the TOS-era customs. Did they ever say they were older than a century? And T’Lar said that the fal-tor-pan was mostly a legend.# Darth Sarcasm on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 3:11 pm: The Stone of Gol could also be considered a legend. After all, wasn't it the "gods" who supposedly destroyed the Stone? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 9:42 pm: True. Perhaps only those adept at using their telepathic abilities back then were the ones using the Stone, and when it was done away with during the Time of Awakening, perhaps anyone with developed telepathic abilities was associated with those who used the Stone, and maybe that’s where the stigma originated. # Maquis Lawyer on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 7:52 am: Fairly early in the episode, Archer calls Phlox and T'Pol into his ready room and chews Phlox out for lying to the Vulcans about why he needed information on Pa'Nar syndrome. Archer then passes on the message that Phlox is no longer welcome at the Interspecies Medical Exchange conference. So, let me get this straight. Phlox offends a couple of members of the Vulcan delegation, and now the entire organization has barred him from attending the meeting? Do the Vulcans really have that much influence in the IME? And are they really so willing to use it in such a heavy-handed, capricious and vindictive manner? And no one else in the IME objected? Somehow, I don't quite buy that.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 8:34 am: Who’s to say anyone else there knows? For all we know, the Vulcans were the only ones aside from Feezal that Phlox interacted with before they banned him. Dragon on Friday, February 07, 2003 - 11:34 am: I think the Vulcans did create the IME. Didn't Phlox say they did, early in Broken Bow when Archer is in Sickbay with him as he unloads all his animals? # Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 4:52 pm: Something else I just thought of. Phlox asks Trip if his wife offered to give the engineer a "rose petal bath." Hmmmmm... First of all, either Feezal picked this up from Earth somehow, or Denobulans have something called "a rose" (but does it smell as sweet)? LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 9:42 pm: We’ve seen alien planets with animals identical to terrier dogs, Doberman pinchers, emus, monkeys and griffon vultures, not to mention identical looking trees, grass, bushes, etc. At this point, why not a rose? In either case, where would she come up with these rose petals, and how would you use them in a bath? You'd need a lot of rose petals to fill a bathtub. There's obviously something more to this ritual, but perhaps I should leave it alone...Darth Sarcasm on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 5:21 pm: For more on rose petal baths, see American Beauty. :) Seriously, though, I think you might be taking the term "rose petal bath" too literally. Phlox could have been talking about a bath mixed with a rose petal extract, rather than one with actual petals. Though I'm now looking at my ex-girlfriend's cucumber/melon bath in a whole new light. :O LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 9:42 pm: Who says they have to fill it? They simply be placed on the surface of the water.brent on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 5:50 pm: Maybe Feezal would have offered the rose-petal bath "when you visit Denobula". And of course it was a translation. # Dustin Westfall on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 8:23 pm: Assuming that Pa'nar syndrome = AIDS, there are a few problems with the message intended. a) There is no mention of a carrier/cause similar to HIV that could lie dormant, allowing one to unknowingly infect others, which is a significant issue. b) According to the ep, Pa'nar syndrome is only passed through mind-melds, and those that can initiate mind-melds are a shunned minority. If we extend the parallel to include mind-melders = gay/lesbian community, and therefore mind-melds = homosexual sex, we have another problem: AIDS is not only transmittable by homosexual sex. By my understanding, nearly any bodily fluid carries the HIV virus, allowing transmission in numerous other ways. c) Following from b), if mind-melders are the only ones able to transmit the syndrome, leading to little to no infection outside the community, the Pa'nar = AIDS parallel collapses, as AIDS, at least in my experience, has long ago lost it's direct association with the homosexual community, as it has since spread to the general populous. So, in my opinion, either this ep wasn't supposed to equate Pa'nar with AIDS (despite the press releases, making the AIDS infoline at the end truly random), or the writers were unable to come up with anything sufficiently close to AIDS, and just faked it hoping no one would notice. The second option is scary, to say the least, given the hype they tried to generate with this ep.LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 12:17 am: Dustin, the two diseases do not have to be precisely parallel in order for the allegory to work. The episode was about the bigotry directed by the ignorant at a given group because of an illness they suffer. It doesn’t have to be 100% analogous in every detail. # The ancient pon farr (or, more accurately, the set up for it) involved a telepathic bond between the betrothed as children. I really dislike this rewriting of history. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 12:17 am: As I understand it, the two have nothing to do with one another. Pon Farr is simply the chemical imbalance in the brain that occurs once every seven years of the adult Vulcan’s life. The telepathic mate bonding was a ritual, and it’s possible this ritual was adopted in the century between ENT and TOS. Obviously, pon farr does not cease once the two people grow up and get married, right? # Good thing for T'Pol that the doctor's weren't privy to the events of "Dear Doctor," or they would have realized that the way to convince him of their viewpoint was to argue that Pa'nar was an evolutionary reaction to a bad gene. Per "Dear Doctor," the Doc holds more concern for long term evolutionary effects than the individuals under his care (directly or indirectly). This would also work within the Pa'nar = AIDS parallel, as there are quite a few that said that AIDS was God's way of punishing the homosexual community. LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 12:17 am: There are some important differences. In Dear Doctor, it was Phlox himself who discovered through his research that the Valakian condition was not a disease, but a stage in the the Valakians’ evolution. He would be able to determine if that were the case with Pa’Nar Syndrome. Also, he was concerned that the Menk’s fate was affected by the evolution of the Valakians, and that helping the Valakians would affect the natural course of the Menk’s evolution as well, because the Menk were kept subservient and dependant on the Valakians. I don’t think that consideration was in this episode. # Dustin Westfall on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 5:04 pm: Having not caught Nemesis, I'll pose a possibly •••••• question: Are the Remans the same race or an offshoot of the Romulans? I thought, based on the makeup and such, that they were a different species entirely.LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 3:17 pm: I always assumed they were an offshoot. I could be wrong, though. Electron on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 4:25 pm: IIRC the Remans are indeed an offshot of the Romulans. Living in the dark and working in the dilithium mines (mutations anyone?) caused them to become little Nosferatus. Category:Episodes Category:Enterprise